Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. We had 33 people this year. Got to meet Mich & Dave's new daugher Miya and Aaron & Aly's new son Luc. Cuties!!!

Last night I crashed immediately after dinner. I just closed my eyes for a few minutes - something like 360 minutes or so. Oops. So I finished up my prep stuff at 3am and then realized that I had left the chow mein out all night. Didn't want to take a chance that it had gone bad, so I dumped it. Went back to sleep from 6am to 9am, then got up to do the Thursday prep.

Packed up the car and was out of the house by quarter to 11. Picked up a floral center piece (love the chrysanthemums!), some irises for K to use around the house and a single yellow rose for the obustudan.

Kyle was counting down the minutes until 2pm. He and Alani were sooooo excited. Kyle says that Thanksgiving is his most favorite holiday.

Kyle helped put together the mexican dip. He was all happy about it until he saw the sour cream. Yuk! Oh well. Then he & Alani helped cut up the finger jellos and put them on the serving plate - for every few they put on the plate, one or two got eaten. Excited children + sugary jello. Oh boy!

My cousin Skip's order got messed up, so instead of having 4 pumpkin pies, 2 apple pies and 2 banana cream - he got 8 pumpkin pies. Somebody else had picked up the pies for him, so he didn't realize the error until he had gotten to the house. Pumpkin pie anyone? Cousin Sharyn made one sugar free apple and one sugar free pumpkin pie - both delicious. There was also a cranberry cobbler, a box of See's candies and rice krispy marshmallow treats!

Kyle, Alani and cousin Brendan (10 days younger than Kyle) had a wonderful time playing together. They teamed up against the "big cousins" Kenji (17) and Michael (16). I think Kenji and Michael are going to be sore tomorrow. The younger kids got lots of piggy back rides and they clobbered the older kids with light sabers and thunder sticks.

Auntie Nobuko looks awfully fragile, but she had fun - got to see her two newest great grandchildren - Luc & Miya.

Kyle & Alani made little cards with stickers on them for everybody. Mine has a Tigger sticker and on the back it says in Kyle's careful printing: "Hope you lik (sic) the food!". They made 40 of them - the first 20 have saying like "Happy Thanksgiving" or "Happy you are here". The last 20 just say "Thank You" because he got tired of writing.

Last group of people left around 10. Clean up was done by midnight. Tired, but very content now.